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Saturday
July 2, 2005

Live 8 Losers by Peter Cresswell

Being a sanctimonious cretin never harmed anyone's musical or political career, as the careers of the Grateful Dead, Bono and Kofi Annan all attest, but it's never done a damn thing to feed the world. The Live 8 lose-a-thon promises to be yet another tune-free festival full of far-out sanctimony and flatulent pieties and — like its 'Live Aid' little brother — a dead loss as far as its stated aim of helping starving Africans. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (29 messages)

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 5:30am

Peter,

I agree with the intent of your article; but so what? What's the point of preaching to the converted?

This is a common theme, here on SOLOHQ. It's time to move on to the next stage. Your article could become a rallying cry for something on the WAR page.

I 'am' working in South Africa and I 'do' know what it takes to bring about 'real change'.

Bob Geldoff and his ilk are doing what they know. They need some new ideas. Ideas such as those expressed here every day. The problem is, the wastefullness of his acts, resulting from his wrong-headedness.

Geldoff has the world's eye on him today; and I'll bet he knows nothing of the VIRTUES OF OBJECTIVISM. That's what we should be wailing and gnashing our teeth about. He is in a good position to have an EPIPHANY; if only someone could hold his ear long enough.

I say, let's all write some intentionally inviting letters to Bob Geldoff and Bono and tell them to get over to this site and GIVE THEIR HEADS A SHAKE.

Thanks, Peter, for activating me.

Sharon

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 6:48am

Peter,

As I've noted before, Geldof's previous excursion into global feel-good-ism probably did more harm than good, feeding the oppressors who manufactured famine rather than those he sought to help. . . Yet an alternative case can be made: in the global altruism business it is, indeed, sometimes better not to do anything at all.

This says it all.

To Sharon--in theory your idea may be a good one, but it has been my experience that people like Geldof are a prisoner of their milieu. They are surrounded by like minded people who are their support network and the perpetuators of their

notoriety or 'fame'. Geldof has a vested interest in not suddenly becoming an Objectivist and, thereby, a nobody.

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 7:04am

Just another day, my colleague and collaborator from South Africa came and visited me. He is native South African, though probably of German stock. He got his Ph.D. degree in US, then took a faculty position at a SA University and now has established a vigorous research program. We are developing a joint research project and are applying for an International Grant. If we get it, I will have a chance to visit SA. Cape Town certainly looks stunningly beautiful.

There is a Kenya girl who works in my lab as research assistant. She got her college education in US and is a very good technician and lab manager. Her mom used to work at a big research center in Kenya.

This year, we have a graduate student candidate from Ethiopia. When I was talking to him, I became very curious and asked him a lot about Chemistry education in his home country. I hadn’t known it at all that there is a decent Chemistry program or even a decent university in Ethiopia. Actually even Eritrea is sending students to other countries to study sciences.

Perhaps, these people I know are all crèmes from Africa. But it is only through them that I get a bit close to Africa. It’s good that they have crèmes, not all are just starving Africans.

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 7:35am

Davidson,-
global feel-good-ism probably did more harm than good,
This says it all.

Says all the bad stuff. That small part of the great event, those funds that were misspent.

Doesn't talk about the ass-kicking live music. Doesn't talk about the breakthrough of Western consciousness, the expantion of what we consider possible and how we see the world. Civilisation thrives on internationalism and Live Aid gave internationalism a shot in the arm, bringing the Western world closer to unity with itself and closer to Africa.

The scorn comes too easily. I don't like Sir Bob & Bono's talk but there's still more good than harm in their work- or at the very least something good has to be said for it. We can surely agree to that in the name of balance?

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 7:59am

"And being a sanctimonious cretin never harmed anyone's musical or political career, as the careers of Grateful Dead, Bono and Kofi Annan all attest."

Someone has taken the trouble to detail the links between Bono's musical releases and his charity drives here and here. And guess what, as the links discuss, while Bono loves to lobby politicians to handover more of our cash, he doesn't actually pay any taxes himself!

The sound of hypocrisy will be loud and clear at Hyde Park today.

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 9:31am

The points are well taken. I think that Bush is trying to refocus aid to countries that are establishing democracies and will allow the money to flow to its private citizens directly. Even so, your point on the true effects of government money makes me think about something my brother said to me a few years ago.
"I'd be happy to give the government half my money if they would promise to take it and dump it in the middle of the ocean rather than fund one of their programs with it."

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 10:05am

"The scorn comes too easily. I don't like Sir Bob & Bono's talk but there's still more good than harm in their work- or at the very least something good has to be said for it. We can surely agree to that in the name of balance?"

Nope. I don't like foreigners who come to America and tell me that I am immoral for not giving more of my charitable contributuons to Africa, and that my government is immoral for not giving more of my stolen tax money to Africans. When: (1) he pays no taxes; and (2) he doesn't appear to give any of his millions to the poor starving Africans; and (3) often, little of the money for these poor, starving Africans ever gets to them, because politics are so corrupt that the money finds its way into African politican's pockets instead of the bellies of the starving.

Now, if you are asking whether thousands of Africans got something to eat when otherwise they would not have, on a couple of occasions, then, yes, Bono's caterwauling has probably done that. But doesn't artificially supporting people in an inhospitable, non-cultivatable land, encourage them to stay there and wait for the next round of aid, rather than getting them to go somewhere else, or do something else, whether it be move to a place where you can do some farming, or rise up and eliminate the local warlord who keeps you from having a farm? Or frankly, just dying off? Should we feed them so that they can overpopulate themselves even further than they already do, past their level of self-sufficiency?

If a man slips into a river, my sense of benevolence means I will throw him a rope, maybe even jump in to help. But if the fucker slips into the river every day, at some point, it is not a drowning problem, it is a walking by the river problem that I cannot remedy.

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 12:56pm

This is a complicated issue. It is easy to be cynical.

In the first event Live Aid, as a voluntary charitable event to raise money to help starving Africans, it was a worthy cause with good intentions, even if those intentions were unrealized or misplaced.

However, Live Eight, hopes to pressure Governments into handing out tax payers money in the form of Aid to African Governments. That is clearly objectionable. However, as James points out both Bush and Blair have made noises about attaching strings to the money in the form of democracy and economic reform. That could actually have some positive consequences in the long term.

Another point is that bundled in amongst that sort of touted "hand-out" mentality (aid and debt relief) promoted by the concert, is amazingly in this country, a current opinion expressed that it is wrong to simply hand Aid money to corrupt African Governments.

That is surprising, I haven't heard that sort of awareness expressed so readily in the media here before. Maybe, if that realization is the outcome, the result of this concert is not so bad.

Saturday, July 2, 2005 - 7:14pm

What would be far more effective than aid or debt forgiveness would be to repeal all the agricultural tarriffs in Europe and the USA! This would free up billions of $ that right now we all pay in higher food prices and let the Africans earn the money by selling their products here (and Europe especially). That would not only be moral for the consumer, but would also spread the money to the farmers, creating a growing middle class, and that is what can bring about real change.

Good note on it here: http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/001951.html

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 12:22am

This is a complicated issue.

I disagree. African Nations stopped paying interest on debt years ago (around 1985 I think), and lenders stopped expecting repayment on principal many moons ago. Live 8 is mere posturing by that self-appointed moral guardian of us all, Bob Geldof.

it was a worthy cause with good intentions, even if those intentions were unrealized or misplaced.

Global welfarism is never a good idea. Despite $144 billion in bad loans, the average per-capita income in these countries is more than 25% below where it was in 1980. What a rousing success!! Tell me another.

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 5:34am

Live 8 is mere posturing by that self-appointed moral guardian of us all, Bob Geldof.

Strangely enough Bob Geldof does not consider himself a socialist but a fan of entrepreneurship. He was considered by left-wingers to be an opponent of Thatcher, but apparently admired her. Now he admires Tony Blair.

Don't get me wrong I am not sympathetic to the aims of Live Eight, apart for the call for trade reform. However, even then, what they are actually asking for is a sort of initial protectionism, eventually leading to free trade.

As you say, what Governments can do to help Africa now, is to get out of the way of free trade and end the subsidies and protectionism of their own industries.

Not likely to happen though.

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 8:04am

Gilles, (it is Davison, not Davidson)

If it was about the music and internationalism, it wasn't about do-gooding, which ranks it higher in my estimation.
But if this was the reason for the event, then it was a blatently dishonest promotion.

Civilisation thrives on internationalism

I am not convinced this is true. Although I do not disapprove of international relations, I do disapprove of collectivism.

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 8:07am

Scott,

But doesn't artificially supporting people in an inhospitable, non-cultivatable land, encourage them to stay there and wait for the next round of aid, rather than getting them to go somewhere else, or do something else, whether it be move to a place where you can do some farming, or rise up and eliminate the local warlord who keeps you from having a farm? Or frankly, just dying off? Should we feed them so that they can overpopulate themselves even further than they already do, past their level of self-sufficiency?

If a man slips into a river, my sense of benevolence means I will throw him a rope, maybe even jump in to help. But if the fucker slips into the river every day, at some point, it is not a drowning problem, it is a walking by the river problem that I cannot remedy

Bravo.

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 9:31am

Here is a very interesting OPEN LETTER TO SIR BOB GELDOF by one Babs Ajayi Friday.

Despite some sappy "selfless" sentiments, her terms "lootocracy" and "legislooter" and "legislootive council" are so charming that I forgive her. She gives a good idea of where the real money is going over there.

Rock concerts are for entertainment and nothing else.

Here are a a few gems culled from her letter:

The most notorious enemies of the fight against poverty and hunger in Africa are military dictatorships and civilian lootocracies in the continent.
(...)
What is the point of working so hard to fight the G8 nations to write off debts while some yam heads are building new debt burdens?
(...)
I wonder if it will not be important for you and Bono to also support the effort to locate and expose the accounts of corrupt African leaders, particularly members of Nigeria's legislootive council, the state governors, federal ministers, state commissioners and those take-all directors at our federal ministries, and the long train of special assistants, senior special assistants, and presidential advisors.

Michael

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 4:49pm

Here is a list from "the times" showing what has happened to aid money to Africa thus far:

SWAZILAND King Mswati III has spent £500,000 on eight Mercedes cars with gold-plated number plates, £8 million on palaces for his 13 wives and £330,000 on his 36th birthday party. Swaziland, where 700,000 people live in poverty, received £15 million of foreign aid in 2003, including £550,000 from Britain.

TANZANIA The World Bank lent £22 million in 1980 for it to open one of the world’s biggest shoe factories, selling millions of pairs to Europe. The Morogoro factory lay idle for years because of a lack of suitable leather in Tanzania and closed in 1990. It operated at 4 per cent capacity and cost £277,000 a year to keep open.

NIGERIA £2.8 billion of aid was spent opening a steel factory in Ajaokuta. £1.1 billion was allegedly stolen by cronies of Sani Abacha, the late dictator, and £27 million went on the factory’s upkeep. The factory produced nothing.

KENYA In 1981 the Norwegian International Development Agency built a fish-freezing plant at Lake Turkana in the desert to help 20,000 nomadic subsistence cattle farmers to exploit fish stocks. The diesel-powered generators cost more to run than the fish were worth so it was adapted to produce dried fish. It closed after the 1984-85 drought killed most of the fish.

The French Government and French companies gave £277,000 to Kenya to build a dam in Turkwell Gorge. It cost more than double the price than had it been put out to tender, but large payments were made to Daniel Arap Moi, then President, and his Energy Minister. The dam operated at less than half capacity for 2½ years

Sunday, July 3, 2005 - 11:20pm

Quit being such a wet blanket, Marcus. It's the good intentions that count.

Monday, July 4, 2005 - 12:04am

"Quit being such a wet blanket, Marcus. It's the good intentions that count."

I didn't realise Americans did irony, Andrew. That ~is~ irony, isn't it?

Monday, July 4, 2005 - 12:09am

Peter,

LOLOLOLOLOL...

You're in doubt about that, man? With Andrew?

(shaking head, laughing and walking off...)

Michael

Monday, July 4, 2005 - 4:24am

Another interesting wording by Mr. Bono:

"I am for free trade, because it will help the African continent to prosper and this is really necessary to defeat poverty!"

Well, if you look at the businesses Bono has run to do this, you will see that free trade equals "fair trade" and more so a combination of WTO/World Bank and Development Aid funds. It's terrible that words like free trade have already been corrupted by these short-attention do-gooders, who have not even the dignity to be consistent.
If they meant what they said, they would have to stop using designer fashion items, because most of them were woven by children in so-called sweatshops (as THEY claim it is regulary done in Africa). But, instead they preache one thing and do another, which is hypocritical. At least, the thing they are doing is not as worse as the rhetoric they preach :)

Monday, July 4, 2005 - 6:06pm

"I didn't realise Americans did irony, Andrew. That ~is~ irony, isn't it?"

It's "realize," Peter. "Z"s aren't just useful for spelling "Zealand," you know. 8 )